I went to see Michael Moore's "Sicko" last night and I was impressed. Having lived in countries where health care is free and where I had to use the medical help they provide, I do know that there seems to be something fundamentally missing when the richest nation in the world can't manage to provide everyone health care. I have seen friends and family bankrupted by the cost of medical care. I have seen young people follow the medical profession in order to live lives of incredible affluence, not because they have an innate need to help others. Many of Moore's detractors point out that you have to wait in an emergency room in France, and Canada, and that is true, but the wait is almost always shorter, and more important, the final care is more thorough, and FREE!

I think the idea of caring for one's brother, whether that person is rich, poor, of your same color, religion, cultural and educational class, has been lost in the race to the top. Compassion for ones fellow human beings should not be a question of who and why, but of when and where. We can afford health care. We did, after all, at a presidential whim, spend almost a trillion dollars on a war which has killed many of our brave young men. Can't we also spend a trillion dollars to save our own people?

The movie points out that it is not just the poor who suffer from lack of health care, but the middle class as well. The horrifying depiction of the greed of the HMO's is too shocking to be silently accepted. Where are our protests? Where is the American protesting in the streets like the French? The gentleman from England said it best, keep people afraid, and poor, and they will not participate in a democracy and thus they will not help each other to create a government for the people. How right he was. We are indeed afraid, and many of us are indeed, poor. Now is the time to act. May God help us take care of our brothers!

Sunshine